


Café Ile Flottante

by FleurDeLis221B



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Chef Sherlock, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), POV Sherlock Holmes, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-04-09 06:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 10,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4337321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleurDeLis221B/pseuds/FleurDeLis221B
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life moved sinuously along the countertops, behind the bulk dried herbs and the extracts but he never seemed a part of it, the sun was disconnected from the garden it nourished. He may have known, but it never appeared to bother him. </p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intensitycity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intensitycity/gifts).



This is how it happens, in the beginning.

Souls grow from small particles, nearby but not quite a part of the stars.

Imagine the stars as fireflies, beautiful witnesses to a marsh already teeming with life, but the rest of the marsh is invisible to us.

Down by the pools, among the little reeds, they start as tiny things, dust particles, they form alliances, slowly, they form bonds, become bigger than themselves until they are like paintings alongside real gardens, something bigger, no less real. 

_'Like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume...'_

Stop: look up from peeling garlic, the young pink skins of spring still clutching the juicy cloves, they are just babies, after all.

New things, young things, but it is time to stir the onions. Every particle of sugar must slowly darken, slowly, or they are not truly caramelized, not all the way through. 

_'The sweetest honey is loathsome in it's own deliciousness...'_

A changeable, delicious air enters the room just before he does. 

There are not just scents but whole worlds behind this air, not just the way the morning hangs on the cobblestones outside, still the realm of the street cleaners, pigeons, and weary souls who call out in too-loud voices to one another in the stillness, exchanging cigarettes and gossip, the troubled souls, the ones who have not rested. 

Whole worlds, theme parks, slums and little fishing villages, trapped on little islands. 

Whole worlds. 

_'Therefore love moderately.'_

"Good morning."

"Mmm."

"Up with the dawn as usual, I see."

John was always cheerful, or seemed to be. A mysterious power.

"Long list today?"

The list was right in front of him, but he never seemed deterred by his chef's lack of pleasantries. He just kept right on being pleasant enough for them both.

"Will Verity be joining us?"

"Shortly."

The schedule was right there, too, but John liked to make conversation.  There was simply no way to deter him, it seemed. Not that much effort had been made.

Stop: time to check the braise. A timer had been set, and it would likely ring soon because there was an aroma of perfection and a buzzing under his skin near his pulse. The timer rang out just as he swept out of the room.

"Mine." 

He threw the word over his shoulder, but, as always, John caught it with a smile, hit the pause button, and scrutinized the list.

"Right."

Remarkable man, really, and the braise is perfect, the fibers of the meat, which had at first seized up in the shock of steam and heat, have relaxed utterly, they are languid and separate into perfect threads at the merest suggestion, sleeping under their tangle of aromatics and herbs.

There is a missing step, somewhere, between the invisible marsh and these vessels.  What breath animates life is not the issue, that is simply what breath does, what air does.

A skipped step, a corresponding dipping in the stomach, the knowledge that there may not be one more stair below this time, one day there will not be. 

Back on earth, it becomes explainable again.

People lose bits of their soul all the time.

It is that feeling that can burn a cold memory into permanence, you are sitting on the curb and hearing words that bite you, or you are sitting on the curb alone, or you are wandering through an early morning already haunted by the night before, the hour before, the minute before.

Loss is hard. When a soul gives away a bit of itself, it is different.

It feels different. Phantom limb, you are not a phantom, you are not a ghost, you still exist, little fragment, color patch, balloon of soul filled with my own breath, the breath of the stars, you exist. 

You are simply no longer with me, little fragment, small world of marsh and lights, because you gave yourself away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry are excerpted from "Romeo & Juliet" by William Shakespeare


	2. Chapter 2

The others trickle in, moving purposefully, early risers by default who never quite manage it.

The kitchen staff are meant to already have started peeling potatoes and mopping. They are late.

They were up late the night before, not still inebriated only because they are old pros. They have trouble getting inebriated, staying inebriated.

They are already clutching their second coffee, moving towards the backroom ironing board, smiles not yet pasted into place.

Now the kitchen is less quiet, it is vital to arrive in time to feel the place, those minutes where it is not yet necessary to turn on all the lights, just a few as you go.  When the first delivery arrives, and you are the only one there: you exchange a few words and sign the slip, morning air seeping through the hatch, the daylight and noise not yet quite arrived.

' _I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...'_

Now the music has been turned on, John does that, the only one who dares change the tone, he will walk into the silent shrine of the kitchen and treat it like a sleepover, a barbecue.

A pirate ship.

He will connect his own sound to the system and fill the space with himself, layers of meaning and sound. He asked permission the first time and then assumed. He never met objections.

Sherlock possessed an acerbic temper that flared at stupidity, ineptitude, futility, but grew silent, eye of the hurricane, during a trying service, but his temper was never directed at John: his chef apparently found no flaws in him.

Verity arrives, starts the pate choux, pastry cream, red currant glaze, meringues for pavlova. 

Macarons, flavors undulating the line of Verity's whim, tracing the circular nature of things.

Citrus with spiced caramel moving into bittersweet chocolate, pistachio becoming mulberry and cinnamon, passionfruit and peach.

_'Curled once about the house, and fell asleep...'_

There is an implicit trust in pastry but you must watch carefully, consider the effect that chilled butter will have on the action, watch for the moment when sheen becomes gloss, when sugar and egg transform into something more, as souls grow from small particles until they are paintings of themselves.

Sugar boils to a hard crack, brittle threads of caramel are gilded cages for ephemeral profiteroles, keeping them here on earth.

Trust: every particle of sugar, all the way through.

Café Ile Flottante already has a reputation to uphold, the young chef intensely photogenic and barbaric in his honesty: he could certainly have been a critic, but he cared very little.  

_'In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo...'_

He was given the choicest selection by every distributor who graced his doorstep: any that had attempted less had been met with near-fatal hostility by the young chef with the curls who seemed always to be there, at the prep counter slicing white roots thick with soil from leeks, at the sink casting an ocean-colored eye across every crusted bivalve that spilled, smelling of rockweed and wind, out of dripping bags of red netting.

The menu was a stunning amalgamation of his favorite culinary obsessions, a list that seemed to grow constantly: he secreted sachets of spice home in his shaving kit after a week in Nha Trang and began to make prawn cake, banana flowers wrapped in betel leaf, but by the time competing posh restaurants had hastened to add lychee panna cottas to their menus he was already curing egg yolks, lacto-fermenting watermelon rinds, or molding meat pies in braised leaves of Savoy cabbage and frying black locust blossoms in honeyed batter, as he did after finding a chintzy old tome of recipes at a bookseller near Medoc.

_'After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets...'_

Laughter from the stockroom. Music from the preproom.

Confidences shared in the walk-in refrigerator, next to the whole grain mustard and the wild boar chops, next to the loud whir of the fan.

Life moved sinuously along the countertops, behind the bulk dried herbs and the extracts but he never seemed a part of it, the sun was disconnected from the garden it nourished. He may have known, but it never appeared to bother him. 

_'Almost, at times, the Fool.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry are excerpted from "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot


	3. Chapter 3

Thoughts grow in the back of the mind like vinous flowers on a fence, first appearing like rebellious sprouts in the cracks in the sidewalk and then insinuating themselves between the slats, between your thoughts, only a little more every day, only a little.

' _You've gotten in through the transom and you can't get out...'_

One day you realize the fence looks better this way, hung with purpling flowers that reflect the dusky sky. Perhaps the fence is burdened, but the vine is healthy. 

You realize that has become the thing that matters.

Stop: add stock, swirl the bouquet garni to the side, just a little, as you stir. 

You must become a little hypnotized while creating a risotto but not fully, your hand must still notice the weight pulling against it, you must still be able to pull back from the garden and add stock, but always stirring.

The recesses of the kitchen always smell like garlic from the cloves that have nearly melted into a puddle, turning slightly golden as they confit in butter, and also like the good crusty bread that is delivered still-warm each morning into the large lidded baskets in the corner. 

They used to bake the bread in-house, but conceded the point: everyone was getting there early enough already.

So the vine grows on the fence, the flowers bloom, and the fence falls in love with them.  

' _...it won't help you because your case is closed forever, hopeless.'_

By then, it doesn't feel like it matters when and from where the seed arrived, it was working it's way through the soil before you even noticed, and long before the flowers opened, it is simply a fact of life now and it's not that you really want to complain about them, they are beautiful, but- it wasn't planned. 

This is a wild garden. Seeds are blown in on the wind. 

Life is a wild garden. 

Stop, check the brûlées, quickly, get back to the little gems of arborio rice in the pan, they will only boil if you don't tend to them, the floury wakes they leave need to be stirred constantly into the peppery broth, the butter swirled into the aromatics that crisped a nutty surface on the grains before the wine.

The brûlées are done, they barely jiggle now, and the pan must be kept flat or the water will splash over the tender scalloped rim of the dish and spoil them, don't spoil them.

' _We've all been here before, we took our turn under the electric storm..._ '

Sometimes songs enter the mind unasked, memories illuminated by absence alone, fragrances smelled that are not there. 

The eyes of strangers: they look again, and again.  What do they see, is it an outline on the shoulder of a trusted advisor?

They cannot hear the music, the swells and trickles that make their way to the outskirts, sneak in through the curtains with the breeze. 

They can't hear the music, but perhaps the faint nod of the the tempo, small motions they can sense but not see.

Stop. The sound before the dinner rush, the quiet that amplifies the pounding on the stairs, the music of the water and the collective intake of breath.

_'You think your life is over? It's just begun.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry are excerpted from "To A Child Trapped In A Barber Shop" by Phillip Levine


	4. Chapter 4

When the water arrives on the savannah it releases life that has been waiting patiently beneath a layer of dust and sand.

Powder turns to mud, primordial ooze, which nurtures tiny shoots of grass, tender creatures seeded on the barren fields in times unreal, days that are mirages...  

_'Within my reach! I could have touched! I might have chanced that way!'_

Until the desert is a universe of life, and the grass breathes in and out.

John has varied taste in music and with a nonchalance that mirrors the fusion in the menu he will juxtapose an unexpected beat against a background of spiced smoke.

He will choose The Gipsy Kings while wrapping forcemeat pâté in a fussily medieval pattern of pastry, American pop music while roasting dark peppers for pimiento cheese, twangy blues while pouring button-sized candies redolent of herbes de Provence, a garnish for the flowering thyme and vanilla millefeuille. 

_'And if, indeed, I fail, at least to know the worst is sweet. Defeat means nothing but defeat...'_

The clouds form, gather, and release, the small animals make paths in the muck and the weeds, the rain filling the spaces they make.

Larger animals do the same, bringing the floodwaters further along those tendrils of consciousness, tenuous at first and then strong, they guide the water that grows the grass, guides it along.

Subsidiaries, capillaries, homes.

John will sing along while he shapes fresh brioche buns for the brisket, a little water, a little flour, a flick of the wrist, the butter and egg in the dough shining through a little bundle, ending up with a little dimple on one side, a ruching, a cowlick, singing still as he sets them all to rise on the rack, steaming all together under their tight covering.

_'And if I gain, -oh, gun at sea, oh, bells that in the steeples be, at first repeat it slow! For heaven is a different thing conjectured, and waked sudden in...'_

Sometimes the chef wonders what it takes to start a conversation, even as he watches others do it. 

Verity berates the dishers for their sloth and their slang, although not above a jostle or a joke, and John teases the waitstaff endlessly as they sweat into the starched corners of their uniforms. 

They have had many drinks together, this crew of pirates, after shifts have ended.

They have grown familiar, like students pushed into the same classrooms, like prisoners pushed into the same cells, alliances and scandals and enmities are forgotten briefly in the overwhelming urge for survival and companionship over shots of whiskey, over the bar. 

Sometimes it seems easier to watch, and wait.

_'I lost a world the other day. Has anybody found? You'll know it by the row of stars around its forehead bound.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry by Emily Dickinson


	5. Chapter 5

They cater an event at a tiny lakeside vineyard, cultivated for the very purpose: it is a wonderland of starry blue wildflowers mingling with tiger lilies, yellow paintbrush and antique climbing roses in every shade of apricot candy and cream.

_'The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars...'_

Chef was rarely known to haul his tender mess into the countryside but relented to the requests of a loyal sponsor who longed to arrange an impeccable engagement party: Ile Flottante's whimsical, confident menu and spectacular croquembouche were integral to her vision.

This is how Sherlock finds himself in a glen of flowers, faced with an opportunity that won't be ignored. As he glances away it holds both sides of his face.

_'That birds would sing, and think it were not night...'_

The stone benches by the landscaped ponds reside under a tangle of wild plum and honeysuckle. Tiny frogs, peepers, chorus in the little reeds, the places where soul-particles acquaint one another.

It was this honey-perfumed sphere of perfection that the kitchen staff had taken turns corrupting with the acrid smell of cigarette smoke all evening, but now it was just John.

Sherlock could turn around, check the time, hurry away, but he hesitates a little too long until he realizes: he has made a decision.

He walks forward and opens his mouth to request a cigarette. 

_'I have a soul of lead, so stakes me to the ground, I cannot move...'_

He doesn't even smoke anymore, let alone speak unecessary words, but the futility of all the lovely romantic gestures of the day and the sheer quantity of crawfish beignets he has crisped has perhaps worn a bit on his mind.

He has come for a cigarette: faced with John he finds himself wanting so many things at once.

_'Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut...'_

John turns, his forehead creased, and seeing his boss about to speak instead rushes in with one word:

"Sorry."

Sherlock falters.

"What?" 

"The dessert was late, I know, I'm sorry about the last-minute garnish change as well, but -"

"What change?"

Sherlock is truly curious, the supposed sanctity of his menu means very little to him, especially in this moment, but John looks wary.

"The, uh, herbes de Provence candy buttons, I think it must have been a bit too humid yesterday when the crew prepped this extra batch and they were gone all foggy and crumbling, still delicious, like honey candy really, we could crumble them on some dark chocolate bark for a special, I should think."

"What did you use instead?"

Sherlock notes in some unused room of his mind that he should probably be more concerned that he had not noticed the desserts going out at all, notes that perhaps he should at least attempt to analyze objectively exactly where his mind has been these past weeks (months?) but it seems far less important than John.

Everything does.

"I just picked some of the really young leaves off the grapevines and quick-candied them instead, it only took a minute or two actually but we were already running a few minutes late when we realized, and-"

"It's fine, John," Sherlock interrupts, holding out his hand, an entreaty, "I'm sure it was beautiful and that even our ineptly pompous guests noticed the sophistication of a little added _terroir_..."

John's forehead uncreases, and the light suddenly reflects on every particle of honeysuckle scent in the air.

There is a color in the sky behind them that he hasn't yet registered, a dusky pink painted on the evening sky.

Many images overlaid. 

'... _and all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay...'_

Images fall on the floor, and the floor becomes the ceiling, and this is what they mean by sleeping in the bed you make: the moments that matter are woven into a quilt that will enfold you.

The Spanish Steps, in Rome, in May, how the rhododendron thrives on the hot breath of tourists and the hot breath of the pavement below where the fountain accepts coins like a patient parent will take stone after stone from the eager hands of a little child in the riverbed.

Wishes, prayers. Coins.

_'I would I were thy bird...'_

The breath of bees over the summer meadow, avoiding the wild parsnip which will give you chemical burns in the sunlight but allowing the nettles to sting you a little, just enough to wake you, as you follow in a dream state through the flowers of the afternoon.

Over these images: tonight. A breath of air stealing over the young grapes, grapes that taste of apples and pears, grapes that taste of young wine as they have grown overripe, new again, old again.

Intoxicating, intoxicated, again.

"Well, thank you," John smiles. "I appreciate that."

"On the contrary. Thank you for minding my business even when my mind wanders."

There is something more in John's eyes.

"Where does a mind like yours wander to?"

Sherlock smiles.

"Afar. Do you mind sharing?"

As he gestures to the pack of cigarettes rolled up in John's t-shirt sleeve he watches John's eyes widen and then grow hard.

"What, ruin a perfect palate like yours?"

John puts out his own cigarette under his shoe before even Sherlock can blink too many times.

"Actually, I've decided to quit as well," John adds casually, with a cheeky smile.

Sherlock sits down on the bench, not knowing quite what else to do.

He is not dismissed, that much is clear. 

_'They are but beggars that can count their worth...'_

John sits down alongside him and they stay there in a knowing kind of silence, watching the darkness pool on the surface of the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from 'Romeo & Juliet' by William Shakespeare


	6. Chapter 6

It begins in the skin on his legs and arms where he can feel the weight of his blanket, blessed cool evening, sleeping weather, mercy in the desert. 

Imagine the stars as fireflies. Where does a mind like yours wander to? Wanting so many things at once.

It becomes more, this dream that begins in the threads of the quilt, thoughts woven together, no longer in his bed, far above the rooftops. Wanting just one thing. 

_'Children under a blanket ~ how mythology begins.'_

Cirrus clouds hold the light, before it has arrived and long after it has gone. 

Sunlight on snow, white light on snow, reflects prismatic sparkles, ice crystals showing what the light is made of, splintered, a soul redistributed among the star-pools.

Altocumulus, rippled orchid puffs across the sky, creating a corona, a wreath of flowers around the moon, for the pink sunset has become dusk, the lights diminishing in every shade of blue.

Dusk becomes a night of stars, an ocean of constellations where the souls become gardens, living serpents, pre-Cambrian fish, rainbows in the darkness, the stars are small luminous crabs in the water, but there is no starlight.

Stars, callous fires burning promises, writing messages long ago into the night, but not here in the water, the universe that is an ocean, under this silverskin, this armor. No starlight trickles from above.

_'A lamplighter, late for work one evening, can only reach one globe at a time.'_

Images fall onto the floor, the floor becomes the ceiling, the continent of dreams below, the ocean above. 

Where one meets another: A shore, a prayer, a place where things meet.  On this beach there is a breath of perfection, not just salt.

Changeable air, delicious air, islands, worlds.  Not just freedom, something more. 

A grove of tangled trees, and a roadside stand where dumpling-peddlers release the smoke of hot oil transforming minced ginger, a prayer, a place where things meet. 

Life is a wild garden, seeds are blown in on the wind, flowers thrive in cracks in the pavement, love thrives on despair.

He cannot see the two of them there, where he imagines they should be, swimming in the ocean, so his eyes rove over the place, searching.

Under a grove of tangled trees, mango pulp on the ground making the place smell of syrup, he finds them.

_'Many have met an otherworldly man in this place.'_

The rain fills the empty spaces, empty vessels, moving the water into the parched and hungry spaces, through the ripe fruit, young wine.

Lamplighter, accidental gardener, circular guardian of days.  Inside the grove the fruit and sand disappear, leaving only color and sugar.

Now it is candy, and he and John have come into focus. No longer a painting but a real garden, and now there is sunlight, evening light, magic light.

He looks so different, ethereal, happy, but John looks the same. Perfect. 

In a moment of panicked clarity, even far above the rooftops in a glen of dreams, Sherlock wonders if this vision is possible: What does this mirror show him?

_'Let's define the world by what it is not.'_

He is awake. Mysterious powers: a buzzing, his pulse. 

There is a real blanket against his legs and his arms, back on earth it is different, it feels different.

Floodwaters, spiced smoke, sweat. No sea creatures, no wild parsnip. It was the awareness that woke him, and now the urge is overwhelming to burrow back into the dream. 

There, they were wreathed in grape vines, hidden in a glen of vines, John murmuring to him, his brow uncreasing. Apples, pears, young wine. 

Pink skins of spring, new things, young things, beauty breaking through. Honey-perfumed sphere of perfection, the sugar must darken, slowly, slowly, all the way through.

The feeling of it suffuses his sadness, his loss, a wild joy born of despair. They were holding hands, forming a circuit in the wild lamp-lit midnight of his mind, connection.  Color-patch, soul-balloon, you exist.

The warmth, the scents remain, light gathered in a cirrus cloud, rainbows saved in ice, relics of star-births, particles of hope scattered down into the sadness, the desert of his loss, seeds waiting patiently for the expansion of the flood. 

Warmth that can burn a memory into permanence.  One thought, in the darkness of his loss. Wanting just one thing.

_'The farmer in spring, who gives the first seed to the wind.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from 'Caught in the Form of Limitation,' 'Between Un-Being and Being' and 'Categories of Loss' from "The Possible Past" by Aislinn Hunter


	7. Chapter 7

The front of the house is quiet after a busy night, salty remnants of preserved lemon and cottonflower perfume in one corner where a first date has taken place over a tagine of grouse and figs, traces of Champagne mignonette and elderflower cordial linger around the bar.

Tea leaves infuse water, light infuses air.

Thoughts penetrate the small folded spaces in the nothingness, releasing what wants to be hidden while releasing what wants to be free. An empty vessel is a patient vessel, it waits to be filled with light.

_'Glory be to God for dappled things...'_

Evergreen: _Camellia sinensis_. There are colors, scents, memories in the steam that lifts off the surface, mirror, armor, silverskin.

_'...skies of couple-colour... finches' wings...'_

"You were in my dream last night."

The words escape, rebellious sprouts, each aloft on a thread, a seed on a spur of fluff, they are gone. 

John looks up. Love thrives on despair.

The wood of the bar is dark and shining and John's profile sad, drawn, gazing down at the lights as they flicker on his glass.

The words escape and dive at John the way teenagers dive off the most dangerous cliff in town, into the water, but John smiles.

Grass, flowers, sugar.

"Sorry?"

"I just... the strain of a long service, I understand... last night..."

Breathe, man, breathe.

"Between the sheer mileage of vines and an excessive number of crustaceans on the menu I found myself dreaming that the crew was trapped on an island of grapes and sea monsters."

Thoughts, flowers. Vines on the fence.

"Oh, right. For a moment I thought you meant just the two of us."

_'Whatever is fickle, freckled...'_

The vine grows on the fence, the flowers bloom, and the fence falls in love with them.

There is a knowing sparkle in John's eye, like sunlight on the water as it creeps farther into the empty spaces, the lonely spaces. 

Sherlock sits next to John at the dark and shining bar, the fairy lights wound around little tiles of mirror, the bottled potions and liquors.

Choices, memories.

"Lahpet."

"What?"

_'With this tormented mind tormenting yet.'_

"Pickled tea leaves. They are a pungent stimulant, but also a national delicacy of Myanmar, and the effects of the fermentation are considered beneficial. We should think about adding them to the menu."

"We?"

"It is also a common practice to offer lahpet to the spirit guardians of rivers and forests."

_'Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.'_

John is simply looking at him with stunned, bemused hope written in all the little dimples of his face, and this is what pushes the last pebble over the waterfall, the one that makes way for the deluge.

Sherlock swallows one last jagged thought, and then casts out to sea.

"Would you care for a real cup of tea?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from "Pied Beauty" and "My Own Heart Let Me More Have Pity On" by Gerard Manley Hopkins


	8. Chapter 8

"What exactly makes a cup of tea 'real'?"

There are shelves of books in the kitchen, books on cookery but also poetry and botany, dog-eared, embossed, corners worn down to card like pen nibs, sweethearts, friends...

_'This is my testament: that we are taken...'_

Jars of tea and spices.

Mushrooms masquerading as chunks of wood; pickled sea beans. 

What do you look at while you sit and eat your toast? What do you keep in the drawers?

The apartment is just upstairs, but people aren't usually invited. John has been invited, and they have wound their way upstairs, boiled water, steeped leaves.

Evergreen. _Camellia sinensis_. Scents with islands, whole worlds behind them.

Honey-sphere, perfection.

"Love."

John blinks, and then recovers. A buzzing feeling: his pulse.

"Love makes a cup of tea 'real'? Seriously?"

An aroma of perfection. Sherlock nods. He knows this is ridiculous but somehow he is brave. Words are his water.

"Like 'The Velveteen Rabbit'?" 

A low shelf lined with books in the nursery. Words are water, move with the current.

Tiny and overlarge books, books with golden bindings. This one narrow, forest green, and frightening. Images ~ Long afternoons, sunlight. Under the covers.

Ill, spirited to the seaside... and the grownups meant to burn his things. Fire and powder... They believed his friend was a thing. He remembered that vividly.

"Pardon?"

"A children's book... a classic, someone must have read it to you at some point. The velveteen rabbit so loved by the boy that it becomes a real rabbit in the end."

The Blue Fairy.

_'How simple 'tis, and what a little sound it makes in breaking...'_

"I may have forgotten..."

The Blue Fairy: summoned by a real tear. 

"...but yes, the same principal applies, I should think."

"Sort of superstitious, isn't it? Like... 'Think charitable thoughts or your bread won't rise?'"

"Is that a saying?"

"Well," John curls his lip, "something like that."

"Superstition is oblivious to truth, will spin the evidence, is a fortune-teller. The love that makes things real is oblivious to everything but the truth."

The tea steams comfort on the wooden block between them. In pastry there is trust: in the brewing of tea there is hope.  Beloved, a garden, a painting.

Things well-loved become more than themselves. Chemical reactions, transformations. Bonds.  Rebellious sprouts in the sidewalk cracks, purple flowers in the sky. 

"Would you care to elaborate?"

Darkening, transforming, it is the natural process, you may say it is decay, but do not say that it is death. These may be the final wishes of the cells, little cubes, mirrored tiles, terrariums, but this is not the final dance. Chloroplasts react with enzymes that darken and shift.

It is love.

_'Death is our master, -but his seat is shaken...'_

"The leaves were grown under the sun, the workers picked them on the right day and processed them correctly."

"That sounds a lot less romantic than I expected."

Sunlight will nurture what sunlight has created. They both smile.

"They also know which seeds to plant. They have saved them from past seasons."    

Herbes de Provence, wishes, coins.

"Well... that's a bit better."

_'...the world goes round, and the moon follows it...'_

"Try the tea, John."

John sips his tea, and his expression relaxes further. You must become hypnotized while still aware of the weight pulling against you. Pendulum, wingbrush against the bell, moments that pass as the vines climb the fence.

"Well, it's lovely!"

Stars, images, burning promises, young wine: John's face looks so young in an instant. Remarkable man, really.

"What do you taste? You have a skilled palate, John, I would never hire a sous who didn't."

_'...a pearled and roseate plain beneath my winged helmet and my winged heel.'_

"It tastes of a meadow. Grass, I suppose, but also something not quite mint, and... something between lavender and plum. I don't know, it's hard to describe. But it's lovely."

A little sigh in the chest, the feeling of water tumbling over the pebbles. Embroidery: what matters will stand before you in full color. Embroidery: your memories will enfold you.

"Lovely, yes."

_'Our colours are as clouds before the wind...'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from the sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay


	9. Chapter 9

Family: _Ericaceae_. Rhododendron.

Small white pebbles baking in the sun, sifting through their own dust. Flowers: Campanulate. White, tinged with pink. Green.

_'Green, how much I want you green.'_

Leaves: Deciduous. Ovate. Lanceolate. Reflecting the sun. The driveway is lined with tiger lilies drinking in the light, like the leaves, darkening with light, like the blueberries. 

The adolescent handing out pails wears a scent that fills the little shed: it is not her favorite, it is kept in the glovebox and smells like a glass case, a cosmetics aisle, a mirrored bottle. Not like her. 

Citrus, locust blossom. 

It will not mix with her, she knows this, she is trying to hide herself. 

_'With the shade around her waist she dreams on her balcony.'_

Delicious air. Fecundity, so many berries. Too much to sell, too much even for the birds. Love moderately.

So many on the ground.

A blueberry-themed birthday dinner was scheduled for the private dining room.  Ridiculous. It transpired that the guest of honor had sentiments regarding a picture book - something about blueberries picked on a hillside. 

But when John became enthusiastic about his memories of this particular book, the chef's opinions on his constraint ~ blueberries ~ transformed.

John could talk about his favorite picture books apparently, no one challenged it and if they had he'd have simply laughed along. It was amazing really, watching him speak of baby bears eating berries while looking as if he might shark you at pool, back you into a corner.

Blueberries. Genus: _Vaccinium_. Food for butterflies.

_'...green flesh, hair of green...'_

The menu sketches were the most beautiful Sherlock had ever done. 

He labored over them while he thought. While he breathed in and out. Canapés with chèvre and indigo mostarda. Magenta stains of white burgundy and blueberry reduction beneath the rare filet. Violet agnolotti filled with honeyed ricotta.

They take different directions through the maze. 

Sherlock had been quiet in the car, but Siman had been boisterous enough to fill the space, singing along to pop music in the backseat, ecstatic to escape the oppression of a prep kitchen in July, and she disappears to the farthest corner of the field, humming. John turns a corner, after looking once over his shoulder, and he is gone.

_'The fig tree rubs the wind...'_

As he picks ~plink~ the berries ~plink~ they fall into the pail with a ripe sound. He improves quickly, the motion is like picking mint off the stem, separating the pith from the supreme. 

He can taste the difference between the fat, satisfied fruit at the top of the branch - even he has to reach up as high as he can - and the clusters that are smaller, shaded. Sweetness, acidity, bitterness. The bloom ~ protection.

They have moved towards each other, but John is in the next row. He is humming, now, too. An old melody, soul music. Fitting. The sun is overhead, and they are both sweating. The light releases something in the grass, where the fallen berries rot.

_'...your white shirt bears three hundred dark roses.'_

"I see you there." 

There is a smile in his voice.

"I didn't imagine myself a dryad."

Why say that? Ridiculous. Rebellious, wild sprouts ~ tender creatures.

Nymphs, spirits of oak trees. Fitting, as _Vaccinium_ requires acidic soil. Bog, heath. Oak forest. John squeezes through a little space between the branches and pops up right in front of him.

"What?"

"Nothing."

John raises an eyebrow. This causes an amazing crease to appear in his forehead, and another just above the bridge of his nose, but one mustn't stare.

"Actually, you could help me, I would prefer to use the larger ones in the agnolotti and the smaller in the mostarda. Perhaps you could pick the smaller ones, they're closer to the ground."

He starts turning pink almost before he realizes what he has said and how it sounds: like a taunt.

"I mean-"

But John is actually giggling.

_'But I am no more, nor is my house now my house.'_

"Cheers, show-off."

He is already picking tiny berries and he is practically glowing.

"I know you cut an impressive figure in a toque but you're not that tall you know, these may be bigger than your average shrubs but it's not as if you're picking coconuts."

Teasing. John is teasing him. Amazing. They both try to huff, but there is so much joy in it, and the branches are almost enclosing them, pushing at them, circling their joy. Wreathed, hidden in branches.

Teasing. Amazing. He decides to give it a try.

"Well done, this is far more efficient. I knew I had chosen a short sous for a reason."

John moves closer. Much closer. The pores in his skin are so close. His breath: so close.

"What reason?"

_'Small lanterns of tin were trembling on the roofs.'_

Sherlock swallows.

"To pick the low-hanging fruit."

John smiles.

"Is that what you think I'm doing? I like to think I have pretty high standards."

They both stand still, the breeze ruffling the leaves all around them. Empty vessels, waiting to be filled with light.

_'The night became as intimate as a little square.'_

"Indeed?"

It is like a murmur, a declaration.

John shrugs, turns away.

"After all, would you hire a sous who didn't?"

"Hmm. I suppose not."

He reaches again for the fat, complacent fruit, temptation, sacrifice for the birds. Sweet, loathsome.

There is a trellis there. A space for vinous flowers.

Phantom trellis, ghost flower, bell-shaped, campanulate, you are real. You exist. 

_'Green, how much I want you green.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from 'Somnambule Ballad' by Federico Garcia Lorca


	10. Chapter 10

' _May I write words more naked than flesh...'_

In the middle of the night the quiet voices come, the images that could never be believed by daylight. The mind is taking what it wants: perhaps in madness the differences will be erased. 

When the molecules detach and all of your thoughts swirl in a puddle, how could a dream be different? Always the same world, different through the veil, reversed in the mirror.

People are real but their voices are not: he forgets their words upon waking if he hears them at all. The words are meaningless to the dream, or perhaps they were never assigned a meaning at all.

_'...the flowers of spring, and breezes are flowing here like honey: Come to me here...'_

There is something unique in John. 

It's in the way he leans against the railing when he smokes with the line cooks during a break in service, when the roar of intimate conversation fills the dining room. 

At times, the others whistle when a pretty shape walks by, bold in their triumph (heat fails to burn them; hubris, lightness) but John never does: pretty shapes find him. 

Charm married to carelessness, a wink and a shrug wound together. It is in his shoulders, the narrowest part of his back.

The way it all fits together.

Little world, the island of nine o'clock at night. The servers are masters of their own grace, the wine (new rain, ripe fruit) changes the quality of the light. 

The grill gives off a holy smoke, censer in the chapel, a scent that draws the heart, moth to the very sun. 

He can silently steer the bravado of this crew: his eyes own the alley and every shadow in it. Complacent fruit, temptation. Sacrifice for the birds. 

' _What now I desire above all in my mad heart...'_

In press photos John always wears the smile with the danger in the corners, his eyes holding a question and also an answer. 

Displaying a plate that Sherlock has conceived and sketched, but that he himself has painted with bright sauce or garnished with shards of scented ice (the light is made of colors in the absence of the darkness).

He holds one hand formally behind his back. Silverskin, armor: holding the light before it comes, after it goes.

Places correlate, different but permanent, they follow rules of space and time. (You are real, you exist). 

There is no road to the shore from the dull-windowed little pagoda which sells oily dumplings and oversweet noodles but in dreams there always is: it leads to a place where only the streetlights try to protect you.

John changes in the back room, they all do, modesty is forgotten on this pirate ship. This despite the presence of small cameras streaming images to the chef's mobile (a sad necessity, as the yarrow-blossom rum and grapefruit-spoon debacle had only confirmed), and in fact, John has taken to winking at them.

' _...oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings...'_

There are apartment buildings that wind on like labyrinths of grit, on a street which in reality is rather mild, and there are back stairways which lead to doorways instead of windows, you end up somewhere you shouldn't be, and always late, or missing.

Cheeky, really, the winking. Very, in fact.

There is no reason for Sherlock to be watching John undo the many buttons on his chef's coat and peel off his sweaty t-shirt. He couldn't know. In some dreams they do not touch: in others they do.

He couldn't know.

The ridge road, too, feels like an island: it is too flat, a place to ride a bicycle, and the shore is invisible although everything slopes towards it. No ocean of crabs and stars, no wild parsnip.

_'...below the apple branches, cold clear water sounds...'_

There is no scent of ginger but if warmth can be smelled it is there, it is everywhere. This time it is different, the world is gone. Something soft under your cheek, something warm. A murmured voice that becomes wind in the trees.

' _...everything shadowed by roses, and sleep that falls from bright shaking leaves.'_

It is only a dream which must be woken from.  There are people at the tables, even in the dream world they are there, and they all expect something extraordinary, something beautiful, made with equal degrees of detachment and love, but detachment is out of the question. (Vinous flowers, burdens).

He finds himself awake in bed, silently wishing.

' _...remember (you know well) whom you leave shackled by love...'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry by Sappho


	11. Chapter 11

_'Stay close, my heart, to the one who knows your ways...'_

In his distraction he doesn't hear the walk-in door open and close. 

He is weighing the possibilities of tarragon, leaves lanceolate, name from the Persian, tame it as one waters ouzo (cloud-formation, peppermint oil). 

Genus: _Artemisia_. Rosewater, cream. 

Unaware of the changed air for a moment: then it is in his lungs. Inhale: Night Sky. Exhale: The Street (undiluted, star-formation), thoughts under a blanket.

_'Stay in the shop of the sugar-seller.'_

He'd already sketched the little cake when the second dream had surfaced, night vision, soft-skinned from the deepest part of sleep, interrupted by a candy-colored dawn.

The door opens and closes: John bars it with a broad, certain shoulder and watches him (blush). Next to the mustard, the mint. Heartbeats loud, underwater sounds, (bubble-formation, love). 

He has done most of the cleaning himself, in his t-shirt (slow night, Wednesday, sent one home) and there are smudges of black from re-foiling the oven trays, and a broad splash of soapy water on his thigh. 

Sugar-seller, dawn. Little cake, honey cake, two teaspoons of Cointreau: lavender stored in the jar with the confectioner's sugar, split vanilla pod. 

( _Planifolia_ : hints, guesses).

Icing candy-colored, orange-blossom nectar, rose-scented, like the dawn.

_'Oh nightingale, with your voice of dark honey!'_

A murmur in his ear, grass and wind, susurration, hush of leaves in the dancing, teasing breeze, his voice holds all of that as he leans against the door. 

Words, usually John's last words in the evening: this time in tones that move blood. 

"Need anything else?"

It could be overbearing, less charming perhaps, the deepened voice (deep already) too suggestive, if it seemed that John could breathe. 

But it seems that he cannot. 

Also, he is smiling (heartbeats, underwater sounds).

Not a farewell: opening act, flower-seed, promise. _Dandelion sage honeysuckle clover._

Little cake, you will be a remembrance of a dream, crowned with wildflowers, the smell of heat mad with dragonflies (summer nectar, love).

_'The awakened heart is a lamp...'_

Dreams are houses: some have lights in the windows (wildflowers, herb gardens, bottles of scent) and by late summer it is clear that the fence was only built for the flowers (vinous, leaves pinnate, glossy) and serves no purpose without them...

"I... think everything is in order for tomorrow's list."

...and the bees exist for the flowers, and in their exuberance they drown the world in honey...

John smiles a little with his eyes and brow, his mouth serious, he is not thinking about breathing (breathing comes second).

"I didn't hear a 'no' in that. Shall I go or do you need me to stay?"

_'...my heart is love's dwelling. If you will burn your house, burn it...'_

Sherlock's mouth is dry as the answer floods his mind, water in the desert, draw it in ( _need him_ ) and as he swallows and licks his lips John watches his throat, stares at his lips for long seconds (there was honey in his dream: dandelion, sage).

John's stare: he is an alleycat befriending a cook in a doorway (smells like a feast) in the star-pressed midnight, or on the island of one o'clock in the morning.

Endearing, his smiling brow is a flick of the tail. 'I will kill the rats for sport!' the flicked tail says, 'I will be affectionate,' (stars are promises, burning messages) but those eyes...

Honeysuckle. Clover.

Staring, wild-eyed restraint, like an alleycat stares at the man with the cream.

_'The lover's house improves with fire.'_

"You're free to go, John, I was just thinking." _Keep talking_. "I did wonder-"

"Yes?"

Eager, laughter in his cheeks. Laughter in the way he relaxes his beautiful shoulders (grease smudge, flower-seed). Exhaled scents: sweat, soapy water, the street.

"Are you busy tomorrow?" John smiles at his shoes, looks up through his lashes.

_Bloody flirt._

"I don't know, boss, am I?"

"I was planning on giving us both the night off, in fact."

John raises his eyebrows, his smile is almost smug now but his breathing is still shallow, pulse racing, a buzzing in the wrist (underwater sounds, love)... 

Sherlock moves closer, just one step (the night: intimate little square).

_'From now on I will make burning my aim...'_

"Siman and Hsiao both wanted hours, and I meant to try the new tasting menu at a place that's rather- special. In a way. I would value your opinion... But of course, it's your night off..."

 _...swallow_ _, eyes follow.._.

"...to do what you like with."

Cheeky smile. Remarkable man.

"I'm going to hold you to that," and he is gone. Honeysuckle, alleycat, cream.

_'Abandon sleep tonight.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from 'Stay Close, My Heart' and 'The Ship Sunk In Love' by Rumi


	12. Chapter 12

Early morning: gnocchi started, smoker cleaned.

Little islands, new things, young things. Whole worlds.

_'...why does it take so long to learn to love...'_

The prep team had rushed to the hatch to catch and stow wrapped herbs, gems of butter with _fleur de sel_ , shoulder chops for braising, brine-addled periwinkles, and cases of delicate red currants and gooseberries for plating the bergamot vanilla _financiers_.

Only the chef remained in the back room, vibrating with the heat of the ovens.

_'...we make camp, no thought of finding more...'_

He had checked the port wine reduction, skimmed the last spiderful of little dumplings into an ice bath, and carried the heavy pot of boiling water to the sink.

The starchy liquid swirling into the drain released a cloud of steam, and as it cleared John was there.

Quietly, again. Murmurs, wishes (pebbles, coins).

"What time is our date?"

The rooftop garden is overhung with lemon trees, and the evening sky is a gentle shade of pink for them (again).

_'...sky and stone, teach me to be tender...'_

Undulating ceramic planters are scattered, some four feet across, all glazed with a wash of aquamarine like the first inch of seawater seen from below in early sunlight, and overflowing with sun-soaked herbs.

Lavender, wild basil. Island in the sea. John.

Always dropping breadcrumbs just to watch him bend and examine them. Smells: sweat, the street, wildflowers. Hot breath of pavement, candy-colored sky.

"Seven," he had answered, willing his heart to keep beating. Buzzing at the wrist: wishes.

Pebbles, coins (meaning is a passport, but try not to get carried away). 

Balloon, buoyant with the breath of stars, making even the air and the breeze seem heavy as you give yourself away again, and again, and again.

John arrives wearing his leather jacket, dark jeans, scuffed shoes. He is underdressed for the neighborhood they are dining in, and this delights Sherlock. He cannot take his eyes off him. He is perfect.

They both have the feeling that all of this silence should be more difficult than it is.

Harbor: we shelter what is fleeting.

Air grows quiet in the face of bravery: not the silence of libraries or of betrayal. Ascending (diligent steps), words, flights of stairs, a quiet path where footsteps echo, breathing patterns, thoughts.

_'...the touch that nearly misses - brush of glances - tiny steps...'_

Lemon trees. Leaves glossy. The elevator to the roof is slow, and carpeted in brightly intimate jewel-tones.

Old brass railings, glass buttons. (Button of silk). 

The chef comes to the table herself, with a quiet knowing smile for them both. She actually tousles Sherlock's curls and yet he can only express soft humility in her presence.

A moment later, a gentle-wristed server arrives and silently lights the little candle between them with a long match.

The twisting script at street-level proclaims 'Cyprus,' luring passersby to this garden nestled among the chimneys and birds.

Family: _Lamiaceae_. Vital to the kitchen. 

The herbs are flowering, and the breeze is swirling their oils into a heady mist.

_'...blinding storms of gold pollen...'_

First course: fried cheese (halloumi).

"Saganaki. Also traditionally made with kasseri, graviera, or kefalotyri."

A server sprinkles liquor over the bubbling squares as the colors of the sky merge with the glass of the decanter. _Eau de vie_ distilled from flowering thyme honey.

_'...together in the purple starry evening; new moon to set...'_

_Lamiaceae_ : Mint, marjoram, hyssop, thyme.

The spirits are ignited (fire in the eyes) and then extinguished with a squeeze of bitter orange.

Hints, guesses. Orange blossom nectar.

"The _flambéed_  version was actually invented in Chicago at The Parthenon."

"I don't suppose they used a brandy anything like this?"

"No. Savvina has made it her own."

Intimacy (shared plates, little squares). Basil, rosemary, savory, sage.

"It's remarkable. I'm excited to see what's coming next."

Oregano, lavender, perilla. Trees. Even vines... Variations on mint. Lavender, plums.

_'...bees? Is it flowers? Why does this seed move around...'_

"The mark of a good first course. Swept you off your feet."

John just smiles. Wishes, coins.

"You could say that."

_'...the roots are at work. Unseen.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from 'Bedrock' and 'The Dazzle' by Gary Snyder


	13. Chapter 13

Two small plates arrive.

A feast is a score, filigree of notes (build slowly here).

No division into three acts, we will still be blinking at the path (mosaic images, filigree of time) when the main course arrives. Love should be simple: radishes with butter.

_'We do not descend, but rise from our histories.'_

Love should be simple: shaft of light to split the heart, landscapes, fruit melting into wine.

"How are these radishes so sweet?"

Butter: real yellow, sweet and bitter flowers, honeysuckle, yarrow.

"They're fresh."

_'...vegetables radiate underground, displace the earth.'_

"Here?"

"Savvina refused to serve vegetables that had spent the day in a truck."

_'While we sit, linked by firelight...'_

"She bartered with the tenants in her neighborhood. She trades them soil and seeds to be repaid with vegetables. They garden on the rooftops."

_'You explained visual time, how there is no weight without shadow. Nothing falls...'_

"So, the radishes-"

"They've hardly realized they're no longer underground. The sugars have only just begun to disentangle."

Stone plate, radishes. Gemstones red and pink.

_'...stones made powerful by gravity...'_

"Her style seems similar to yours."

"Yes."

_'...desire made powerful by the seam between starlight and skin...'_

Colors, pulling in every direction, what is lost is remembered, perilla, rosemary, what is forgotten lives in the pigment: eyes, skin.

It is difficult to focus: John has shed his leather jacket.

Shellfish, third course (maestro, perfection), the Pernod melts into the tomatoes, the feta, compromising the spices, balanced by a pale moon, tigger melon sphere macerating in arak. 

Anise (promises).

_'...like losing your balance in a dream, being woken by the feeling of falling...'_

Love: you hung the moon (faint lantern, omen).

Melon scent, aphrodisiac, fill the room, soul balloon.

Square of night, bowl of sky, color saturated with spirit.

Too hot for the jacket.

_'...you're measuring pigments, stealing the contents of this light...'_

"Radishes deter pests and increase soil fertility."

"Oh?"

"These are Savvina's favorites, an Italian heirloom. _Rosso Tondo A Piccola Punta Bianca_."

John's smile is a hand offered, these shores are a dance floor.

"She saves her own seeds."

"Yeah, she definitely reminds me of you. A zealot. A romantic."

_'...we fall from each other like halves of an orange, skin dark as pottery in lamplight...'_

"How long have you known her?"

_'There are three kinds of teachers...'_

"Eight years. When I met her she was fishing in the Aegean with her sisters, and I was trying to burn down my boat."

_'...one who teaches by making you afraid...'_

John smiles: the stars are arrows, pointing toward his lips.

"I should probably express surprise, but as your sous-"

"Yes. In my defense, my port-side grill would have been fine if it weren't for all the ouzo. And mescaline. And my Sea Bream were cooked perfectly."

"I'm sure they- Did you say mescaline?"

_'...one who makes you angry.'_

"I did. Her friendship did me a world of good. And now I've brought around my dangerous-eyed sous to meet her."

"I see. You're showing us off to each other."

Sparkling eyes. Remarkable man (he glows).

"I am a showoff, that's what I do."

Dropping crumbs.

"Right. Well, I'm thoroughly seduced. I can't wait to see what's for dessert."

_'The third makes you love him.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from 'Lake of Two Rivers' and 'The Day of Jack Chambers' by Anne Michaels


	14. Chapter 14

_'The butter and the cream do wondrously abound...'_

Cardamom cream, cognac macaron, poire flambé. 

Begin at the end, circle back. What is there to be said about butter and sugar and the way they dance? The music must reach the core to cause a reaction: The universe would be dark if it's heart were not on fire. 

Sprouts grow in the little spaces of our footsteps, or they try. We were young, we grew dreams like lupines on a hillside. (Bluebonnets, palmate, divided into many leaflets).

_'The cresses on the water and the sorrels are at hand...'_

If whiskey tastes of leather, char the wood. Let the water of life darken, let butter be skin, let us be reactionary!

Fireworks! Starbirths! (Acylation, cinnamic acids, earth and fire).

Something new here, sugar darkens as it shifts, changing the visible spectrum. Move yourself inside, tilt for a clear view of the spirit, through the glass, against the sky. Molecules are play structures for little gods.

Dessert is a journey, life miniaturized.

_'Have I sought thee, sweet spot, from my home by the ocean...'_

Life arrived: You will wander into lupine forests and hardly notice them.  

_'And trod all thy wilds with a Minstrel's devotion...'_

Swing free, fall, break. 

Caramel, love, secrets kept. Soft little grid, sugary truth, you will crumble (crumbs through the fork, sacrifice for the birds, the gods, the wind). Caramel, candy, love.

Dessert is a triptych. Three points, three panels, from chill to melt, from sprout to forest. Edible gold: tethers, (well you know whom you leave tethered). Allow your house to burn and you will transform, paralysis, pyrolysis.

Wild hope: let madness bring the walls down (sadness tasting of toast, sugar, butter). Three points, three dimensions on the map to find you, to reach you - 

"Sherlock."

_'There's a soul in the ruin that never shall die...'_

"Hmm?"

"What are you thinking about?"

_'And the ivy clings round it as fondly as I...'_

"You're not going to tell me," with a twinkle (marvelous man). "I can tell. Hesitation, followed by the next thought that surfaces."

Fleur de sel, vanilla (hopes, wishes).

"Probably a clue in that thought, but you're too clever for me. I'd need to hire a detective."

Who salted this earth? Fear? Feel everything, feel everything. Edible gold, lantern-light, tethers (well you know whom you leave tethered).

_'Here blazed the sacred fire, and, when the sun was gone...'_

"John..."

"What?"

_'As a star from afar to the traveller it shone...'_

"It isn't quite fair. What am I thinking about? No response to that question could be a lie."

"A prepared answer could be a lie," (dimples, remarkable). "But I think I could spot a lie from you, and anyway I didn't mean to imply..."

"I suppose if I was more clever I would have prepared answers to your favorite question."

"I have more favorite questions that you haven't heard yet."

Cheeky, file it away, stare directly at the eclipse and it may last for you forever, one must breathe in order to live. 

The ocean pulls at tethered clouds.

"You know you're clever, Sherlock. Let's prove it..."

_'Tis this makes the Earth, oh! what mortal can doubt it?'_

"I think you can... Tell me where I want to go right now. Tell me what I want to do."

_'A garden with it - but a desert without it!'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from 'The Fair Hills Of Ireland' by Samuel Ferguson, 'Gougane Barra' by J.J. Callanan, 'The Old Castle' by Mary, Last Name Unknown, and 'The Pillar Towers Of Ireland' and 'The Vale Of Shanga'Nah' by D.F. McCarthy.


	15. Chapter 15

_'I still do not know how those rosy, sweet lips taste...'_

"You want to take me to your apartment and make me a drink." 

Remarkable smile: Currant, cognac, honey. 

The gentle pink has given ground to a darkness that longs to smuggle them away. Under blankets, wrapped in velvet like jewels.

"Do I?"

Tease the appetite. Send them home sated, send them home hungry.

"This was your experiment, you tell me. Am I clever?"

Lavender, brine. Love, wine.

"Yes. Yes, very."

Walking into the street is not like waking, nor like dreaming. 

_'The dry leaves scattered by the unsettled air of the night..._ '

The yellow windows of evening (little lights engraved against the sky, let us go, you and I) are visions of other worlds, other nights and days.

Out there, out there...

Euphoria: There is a whole world out there! Birds in the living air! Blood cells, life-breath, move us as we displace you.

Paloma: The Dove. Envoys of starlight, lost messages of love.

Three parts grapefruit soda, salted rim, lime wedge. Words! You fly from a sinking ship.

"Serving me tequila at this hour? You're more dangerous than I thought."

_'I contented myself with gazing at you... I have kept vigil at the feet of an angel.'_

"You love it."

John's apartment is revealing: He is a romantic. 

Remarkable man. John cuts a figure on the small balcony, in his leather jacket, indulging in a rolled cigarette. 

Impeccably rolled, unsurprising to anyone who has seen his fingers (callous, gentle) coax pasta dough (caramelle, mezzelune). Framed by midnight mist, orange-purple glow of the streetlights.

Persistent philodendron (leaves pinnate, deeply cut) drapes itself dramatically across the window-pane. On the walls, framed seed-packet art.  _Thyme Ordinaire. Marjolaine._

_Lamiaceae_ , vital. Small table, vignette in the window (leaf-patterned, lamp-lit).

"Tell me something..." The night has made him brave. Citrus, salt.

"Something I don't know."

"About me?" John smiles. Old-growth, backseats, initials. Trees that are small planets.

"You're very clever, boss..." 

Licks his lips. Cheeky.

_'...I still do not know...'_

"But that's still a rather wide field."

_'...how those rosy, sweet lips taste...'_

"Fine," drink-gesture, ice-tinkle, "then tell me what you're thinking."

John tries to school his smile, fails (irresistible to behold).

Love, you hung the moon.

"I'm thinking you like it when I call you boss."

_'...gorgeous color you spread fond over the window panes...'_

Remarkable man. Watches him. Blush. 

"Don't kink-shame me, John."

"On the contrary. I'm encouraging you." 

"Mm. And you? What's your pleasure?"

John measures a thought, stands, and reaches out his hand. These shores are a dance-floor.

"Let's go out on the balcony. It's a bit warm in here."

Water at dusk is every shade of mirror. Quick-tongued mirror (speak pink, speak blue) show yourself to me.

Smoke, lavender, brine: I will show myself to you.

Take John's hand (had this dream before).

Let this skin tell you secrets, tell you what my pillow knows. 

Let me breathe, let me breathe...

Unsteady, it isn't the drink, John is holding his hand. John's other hand is touching the fabric of his sleeve.

"You can just call me John. I like the way you say it."

_'...quivers the water when the wind blows...'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from "Morning Song," "How Can I Depart If I Love You?" and "I'm Not Afraid Of You, Little Owl!" by Rosalia de Castro, translated from Galician by Eduardo Freire Canosa


	16. Chapter 16

  
Time cannot be willed away, vanishing over that sparkling edge, vanishing.

"John."

One foot in front of the other.

"Yes, boss?"

Sherlock's smile is a lamp-lit curl, blossom-colored in the dimness, smug. Soft dimples glowing in the tiny lights.

"You're trying to distract me."

"Yes, boss."

Fairy lights strung above and around the little bench. John is so close and they are all alone.

Collapsed: Time as a pile of string, a knot of angel hair, this moment right here on the strand, right here.

_'...je détruis ton désir, ta forme, ta mémoire...'_

John sits here after a shift in the kitchen, smoking his tobacco in the softness of the night in his sweat-stained shirt. Adrenaline, char-smoke, sweat in his hair, archetype from a fantasy and almost too tired to care. 

Mantras carved into the railing. 

_'...je te nommerai guerre et je prendrai sur toi les libertés de la guerre...'_

The best seats are at the crown of the proscenium, red brocade, red velvet. The curtains, the cushions. 

"I have something you're going to like."

John is there at his elbow, (everything that matters is there, night breeze ripples the curtain) and every word he speaks is a surprise. 

Remarkable man, show us the light that shines from paradise, scent of fruit ready to fall.

_'...longtemps ce fut l'été... et nous nous parlions bas, en fuillage de nuit...'_

"I'm going to add something to your paloma, an experiment."

"Spiking my drink? I assure you, John, you don't need to."

Half-smile (he knows).

"Of course I don't." Cheeky. "This is a new mixologist's trick I've been playing at. You're going to love it."

Little bottle (drink me) pulled from a pocket. Atomizer.

John spritzes twice over Sherlock's glass, little tumbler speckled with jewels. Molecules disperse, land in a misty cloud, surface tension stretched around a sphere of cloudless ice (boiled first, perfectionist, remarkable man).

Sherlock stares, blinks. 

"Did you just perfume my drink?"

John's laugh is kitchen-colored. Steam lifting from the surfaces, shine, hunger. Not simply golden, nothing so simple, descending upon the holy: John is not holy. Sacred, surely. Sinful, perfect. 

There is gold there in his smile, in his eyes, just as drops of sunshine climb the hillside following revelry in the black, star-strewn night. 

A golden light with worlds inside it, pinks that know what yellows know, greens that exist only here. John's soul, his voice, every word touching his perfect lips...

_'...n'avions-nous pas l'été à franchir, comme un large océan immobile... ta coleur d'été...'_

"Yes, I did. It's edible scent."

Leaning in, breathing in, firing impulse of spice, running water, the blush that runs along the very edges of the blossoms, along the very edges...

Edible. Seafoam, memory: ingest it. Philosophers, cooks, artists with the same question: if acetylcholine and norepinephrine must flood the mind with significance just to prevent it from poisoning itself, how are we to find anything empty to cling to, to float us along? 

Save it, release it, ingest it. What can we do?

"You should see the little rooms where they make them, condensed from oils and extracts, no synthetics. This one is winter citrus. I don't know how they make the one that smells of chocolate birthday cake, but every surface in the shop is covered with eyedroppers and bottles like an apothecary."

"Edible scent."

"Yes." 

"You're a tease, John."

So close.

_'...tu portes près du cœur une même blessure, une même lumière où bouge un même fer...'_

Blush, heat, along the very edges...

"You have no idea, boss."

_'...accueille-nous, qui avons goût de fruits qui tombent...'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lines of poetry from 'La Lampe, Le Dormeur,' 'Vrai Nom,' et 'L'été de Nuit' by Yves Bonnefoy


End file.
